Magazines

From my young days as a child visiting a makeshift chest clinic in a terraced house on Walton’s Parade’ in Preston clutching the latest copy of ‘Sunny Stories’,  by Enid Blyton, who became a firm favourite, to my stacks of ‘Nova’ magazine which had to be abandoned in a flat on Cheetham Hill as I made an escape from a dubious flatmate, I have been hooked. 

In the early days of ‘Bunty’ and ‘Girl’, we were lucky to have them delivered with the newspaper and I only had to make the effort when I wanted to read 'Dandy' and 'Beano' which weren’t thought suitable, so I had to go to the shop to buy them. My favourites were the school stories and the girls' wonderful times at boarding school so I remember ‘The School Friend’ which looking at copies Online now are really well presented but from all points of view ‘not politically correct’. In them was an escape from my basic boring Comprehensive school of everyday things to a wonderland in a mysterious old house or mansion where you could be with a group of pals who had adventures and afternoon tea served to them. Sometimes they dressed up in gowns and masks as’ The Silent Three’ to right a wrong. It was very moralistic with honour for the school and each other. I loved the names Polly Linton and Betty Barton, Cora Grandways was a troublemaker. 

'The School Friend' was published by Amalgamated Press as a story paper for girls from 1919 to 1929, renamed The Schoolgirl and continued to1940, revived as a comic in 1950 as a mix of comic strips and prose stories published by AP, then Fleetwood and IPC .In 1965 it merged into ‘ June and Schoolfriend’ edited by Mavis Miller. Some original titles were:

 

     The Gypsy Schoolgirl 

     The Heroism of Phillipa Derwent 

     The Girl who Deceived the Form 

     Bessie Bunter’ s Busy Day 

This was supposed to be the correct way to think and mostly went unchallenged. 

As a young adult let loose from the claustrophobia of home there were so many versions of life shown in the monthly editions and as for the top shelf men’s mags!

The American edition of 'Cosmopolitan' was a find and much better than the later British version but returning to the 70’s there was ‘Spare Rib’. 

This was serious stuff, not the sitting down with a packet of chocolate digestives to while away an hour, material. This magazine was founded in 1972 in the U.K. to shape debate about feminism, challenging stereotypes with a jokey title referring to the Biblical reference of Eve who was the first woman created from Adam’s rib and showing there was no independence for women from the beginning of time. The first issue was distributed by Seymour Press but  W.H. Smith refused to stock it because it had an expletive on the back page! Later it was distributed to a network of radical and alternative bookshops. 

It had to have the ‘look’ of a woman’s mag but it’s purpose was to investigate and present alternatives to the traditional roles of virgin, wife and mother and to set the record straight on Women’s Liberation by reaching out to all women. It ceased publication in1993 as there were splits in thinking. 'Spare Rib' is recognised as iconic today in the U. K and was digitised by the British Library in 2016. It remains one of the Women’s Liberation movements most notable achievements. 

There are too many magazines to do them justice here but they have featured over many decades of my life. Sorry, can’t find a poem for this and thank you for reading.

Cynthia

Read More

Magazines: Creative Inspiration

Several years ago I was gifted a carload of National Geographic magazines. For nearly a decade I have cut them up incorporating bits into my own collages. I have also used them as resource material in multi-media workshops. Most of these periodicals are now in pieces, butchered as sacrificial lambs for the sake of art. 

11th February 2024, Manchester Museum (Image credit: Kate Eggleston-Wirtz)

With my stash considerably depleted, I recently went on a quest to find new source material. Facebook Marketplace proved fruitful. Whilst perusing, I came across a Marketplace post selling Country Life magazines (1972–2002). Fortuitously I know David Hoyle at Lytham Heritage Group Archive Centre who posted this advertisement and contacted him straight away wondering if LHG would take an offer for a handful of the bundles (the entire lot listed at £200). He said, Yes indeed. Come next Wednesday with a shopping trolley.

Off I traipsed on 14th February with my green festival trolley chucked in the car as suggested (lol), drove across town, parked up, walked the high street towing the trolley and arrived to be greeted by the leaning towers of Country Life. It was pot luck so I grabbed four bundles, had a chat, made my donation and hauled away my treasures back to their new home in the studio. At the time of this writing there are still loads left if anyone is interested. Also, the LHG Archive is well worth a visit and inspirational unto itself.

Country Life magazines (Image credit: Lytham Heritage Group)

I was excited and it didn’t take long to get creatively stuck in. Country Life December 23/30 1993, page 58 and Country Life April 28, 1994, Page 76 quickly became defaced by turning them into Blackout Poetry for the 23 February A Dead Good Blog post, ‘Blackout Poetry: Creative Development’.

detail from KEW Blackout Poetry, Dead Good Blog, 23rd February 2024

To recap from previous articles, Blackout Poetry along with Collage Poetry are forms of Found Poetry, whereby the poet finds words within text already published. Blackout Poetry leaves the words in situ as they appeared in print whilst Collage Poetry is formed from selected cut out words from a page or pages of writing/s and reassembled. In the piece below the words were cut out of a copy of BBC Magazine from July 2006.

KEW Collage Poetry, Dead Good Blog, 18th April 2022 

In further investigation into Collage Poetry, also referred to as Cut-Up Poetry, I came across a quote by Bachalard (1958) that sums up this method and actually all Found Poetry quite well:

A competition of surprises that stimulates our consciousness…cut-ups seem to have just this quality, taking an existing, often unpromising piece of text and transforming it into something new and worthwhile in its own right…

The inspirational beauty of these different methods of Found Poetry for the writer is creating with words and phrases that may never come to mind under normal circumstances. We all have favourite words and ways of wordsmithing resulting in our own unique voices i.e. Edgar Allen Poe who often wrote in a ballad-like format vs Edward Lear who enjoyed producing nonsensical limericks.

Following on from the Blackout Poetry and Collage Poetry experiments I thought I would try something different with the magazine pages. I made an attempt to combine the idea of Found Poetry and how poets traditionally create, Pulling Words Out Of The Head Poetry; this new form, at least I think it’s a new form, I have dubbed the Paragraphs Pencil Pick.

Paragraphs Pencil Pick Poetry doesn’t necessarily destroy the actual magazine text - it could, but doesn’t need to. All that’s required is a piece of paper and a pencil/pen, alternatively a computer (depends on if you are old school or not), a pair of eyes for scanning and a want/need to find words that intuitively speak to the heart. The article ‘Around the Salerooms’ by Huon Mallalieu in Country Life January 27, 1994 page 66 became my go to for this exercise. The reduction/addition process is as follows:

1) Choose five words from each paragraph:
· name, leg, man, interesting, intriguing
· born, lived, travelled, awaiting, passage
· reached, forced, served, commander, worked
· suggested, tending, foot, peasant, began
· giving, sits, common, clothes, worn
· ascending, woman, window, watches, couple
· loving, painted, expected, oddities, laid
· cage, pair, detached, ball, saw
· globe, hinged, identify, spectacles, wanting
· called, begetter, wedding, today, paid
· included, touches, gold, box, sold
· spherical, time, price, beyond, precious
· died, firestorm, rise, battlefields, world

2) Choose one or more of the words from each line:
· leg
· travelled
· commander
· foot
· worn
· woman
· lovingly
· ball
· spectacles
· paid
· gold
· precious
· battlefields

3) Let the imagination run wild using the earmarked original words and adding other words from a place that Steve Rowland often calls the Imaginarium.

Experiment 1

I chose one word of five from each paragraph selected (see above). In the final outcome I wanted the second line of the poem to appear ‘dragging’ at the end, thus the text is aligned on the right for visual effect.

The leg travelled with its commander

dragging the mangled foot behind the worn out old woman

who stopped sat down took off her stocking

to lovingly caress

the ball, heel and toes

looking through spectacles

contemplating the high price paid

touching gold, the precious commodity

that had walked battlefields

Experiment 2

I chose a second set of words, one of the five from each paragraph keeping them again in the same order as originally written, leaving out any words from paragraph six – artist’s license.
· man · awaiting · served · began · giving · expected · cage · wanting · today · time · world

Man awaiting to be served his sentence,
a word less spoken, a mouth began
giving lip service, what he expected
stuck in a cage and wanting more
than bricks and bars, today to break
out but no, break down do time,
the world no longer his, but mine.

Experiment 3

For this last experiment I chose a third set of words, two of the five from each paragraph and mixed up the order. In the end I left out nine of the 24 selected words – again, artist’s license. There are two outcomes.

· firestorm · died · beyond · spherical · called · wedding · identify
· hinged · pair · saw · painted · oddities · couple · watches · sits
· common · suggested · peasant · reached · worked · born · passage
· name · intriguing

Wedding

The couple sits hinged together
cross-legged in a meditative state
the new forest as their only witness
to naked skin, evidential social cloaks
soft and supple - hard worked leather
born through the passage of privilege and a common peasant womb
entering a firestorm of tethers in time dismissed
an intriguing pair of oddities
planted equals set alight
the picture painted
miseries and
discontent
to rise
above
when
true
love
called

In the first layout I left a trail going off to the right to symbolise birth and coming out into the world. In the poem’s development, the couple appears that they will grow together like a tree, rooted in the same earth with the ‘new forest’ symbolising a new audience accepting the joining of two people from different social backgrounds.

I added the ‘new’ to help with the visual shape. As a result, I wondered how the text might work as a concrete poem in the shape of a tree rejigging some words to create an improved shape. I was pleasantly surprised with the final result. 

Wedding

couple sits hinged

together cross-legged in

a meditative state the forest

as their only witness to naked skin

evidential social cloaks soft and supple

versus hard worked leather born through

the passage of privilege and a common

peasant womb entering a firestorm

of tethers in time dismissed the

intriguing pair of oddities

planted equals set

alight the picture

painted

miseries

to rise

above

when

true love called

Thank you for reading.
Kate J

Sources

Frances, M., 2009. Collages and cut ups – The Art of re-arrangement. Personal Construct Theory and Practice, 6. https://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp09/frances09.pdf Accessed 3 March, 2024.

Read More

Poetry Magazines, Past and Present

Poetry magazines. I've subscribed to a few over the years and I've always been a sucker for any I found in charity shops. Then, one day, somebody passed a pile on to me when they were having a clear out. Result: I seem to have acquired a small collection. It was never a deliberate intention. It just happened.

Some are recent. A lot, though, date from the heyday of kitchen-table poetry magazine publishing. Some have a professional, almost mainstream look about them. Others have a more home-brewed appearance. Some, looking at them now, aren't exactly magazines, but pamphlets devoted to one poet. A few stand out. New Directions 36 features work by Allen Ginsberg and Octavio Paz. Then there's Ambit 75, from 1978. The cover (below) is a reproduction of a letter from J.G. Ballard to Ambit editor Martin Bax, regarding a Ballard short story that appears in the magazine and the possibility of illustrating it. The same magazine includes a review by Fleur Adcock of Basil Bunting's Collected Poems. Another, typewriter 6, features concrete poetry that explores the limits of the typewriter. In these internet days, it's easy to forget quite how 'out there' these games people played with typography seemed at the time.

Not so long ago, I found myself in an unexpectedly warm discussion with someone about the fate of printed poetry magazines. It was partly my fault and he was quite right to point out that their waning fortunes were, largely, down to rising postage costs. I don't think that tells the whole story, though. I said to him that it was also, perhaps, down to the rise of online poetry magazines, which he disputed, claiming no-one actually read them. This got me thinking. It's an uncomfortable question, but how many people who've bought printed poetry magazines over the years – even in their heyday – actually read them from cover to cover? I suspect a lot of buyers are poets wanting to to check out a magazine prior to submission or who feel they should support a particular magazine. It would be naive to think subscribers and readers are the same thing. And even if all the subscribers to a particular magazine were avid readers, if you get a poem published in it, then like all poetry in printed books and magazines, it's going to sit there in the dark for all but a couple of minutes of a reader's life (less, if it doesn't engage them), pressed up against a similarly unread poem on the opposite page.

About six months ago, I bought a box of tall glasses. I take a new glass from it from time to time if I break one or need an extra one. They're all individually wrapped with bubble-wrap and sellotape. I unwrapped one the other day to discover it had two dead spiders in it. They must've been there since the glasses were wrapped and packed. While still alive, they'd filled the glass with a fog of spider-web. Imagine my surprise when, as I tried to clean it out, one of the 'dead' spiders came to life, scuttled across the work-top and disappeared behind a row of storage jars. Rather like a poem in a magazine, it had sat in the dark for heaven knows how long, before suddenly bursting into my world for a few moments – only to disappear back into the darkness. If it were a poem, it would be a good poem, as I'm unlikely to forget it and here I am writing about it and talking about it to anyone who'll listen. As is often the case, I think we often make too much of the difference between work found on the internet and its analogue counterpart. In both cases, what we write has one chance to grab the attention of the reader. If it fails, it suffers the fate of the unfortunate second spider. What matters is not whether it's published in an online or in a print magazine: what matters is whether it's a good poem or not.

With a print magazine, the fact that you can hold it in your hand means it speaks to you before you actually read it. The medium is the message almost as much as the poetry it contains. That it had to be designed, typed, photocopied, folded, stapled and distributed, all from the much-vaunted kitchen table, adds to its aura. And you might want to make your poetry into a beautiful, physical thing – as, say, Blake did – and I'd have no argument with you: it's great that people still do this. It's great, too, that some online magazines issue occasional hard-copy anthologies. Nevertheless, it's impossible not to notice that poetry lends itself to the internet: there's no getting away from the fact that most poetry fits very nicely on a screen. And there's no escaping the fact that internet pages – though less permanent than print – can have an aura of their own. It springs not only from the craft involved in making them (which any writer of HTML in the early days of the internet can attest to), but the fact that you never really know where it is: you can't take hold of it and, like Frankenstein's reconstructed man, it takes electricity to bring it alive.

When you get a print magazine in your hand and turn to the first poem, if it doesn't appeal to you, you'll turn the page. You bought it, after all: you want to get what you can out of it. I don't think anyone likes everything they find in any one print magazine of any kind: if you enjoy forty to sixty percent of the content, you think it was worth buying. I have a hunch, though, that people are less forgiving with online magazines. If the first couple of posts are not to their liking, a lot of people will stop scrolling down and look elsewhere. Just as with the printed equivalent, to do so, I think, is a mistake.

Of course, not everything's as good as it could be, any more than it is in the world of printed mags, but there are a lot of good online lit mags out there. It's right to mourn the passing of the golden age of the print-only version, but wrong to overlook what is perhaps a new, online golden age. There are too many to name: one has to go out there and search for oneself. I could make a list but, if you're not into online lit mags, I'd hate to deprive you of the fun of searching for them (while avoiding, if you're thinking of getting published, those that charge 'submission fees': vanity publishing is alive and well). If, like, I suspect, most people reading this, you're already into them, you'll have a mental list of your own.

I could imagine, back in the days of Gutenberg, mourning the disappearance of works like the Lindisfarne Gospels (if, that is, I'd been lucky enough to actually see and been able to read them). Similarly, today, when I hold Ambit 75 in my hand, it's impossible not to think that something great has passed from the world (Ambit, sadly, came to an end in 2023). There again, when I check out my favourite online zines, it's obvious something equally worthwhile in its own way has come into it, too.

I'll finish off with the first poem – I think – I ever got published in a printed poetry magazine, Mark Robinson's excellent (though now, sadly, defunct) Scratch back in 1995:

Ranter

Would they let him in?

He'd have to sound convincing. For a start,
he'd need a name - you know,
the sort that sounds
uncrackable, as if
he'd lived with it for years.

He'd need a reason, too.
This proved more difficult. It was not enough
to be the life and soul of the poem. They'd
see through that, they'd know
he'd almost certainly get pissed, then try
to set the universe to rights, grasping the sleeves
of exasperated punters. That's when
things always start to go wrong, he thought. In the end,
they'd have to throw him out.

"You bastards, I made you." He could hear himself slur, skidding
in a pool of his own vomit. "Where would you be
without me?" And then:

"I think we've had enough, sir."

"Bastards..." "Goodnight, sir."

Back to the street.
He'd have to think of something else.
He could make promises:
he'd keep his clothes on, only relieve himself
in the appropriate place, not puke
on the floor, keep his ideas to himself, even, though
what's the point? he thought. I'd
most likely break them, along with the glasses, and
perhaps it's not my sort of place after all.
Perhaps I just want to get out of the rain.

He might just take a bus instead.
Invent the route. Watch himself
stretched out across an empty seat
reflected in the darkness of the glass.

He might end up anywhere, might even rediscover
dragons


Dominic Rivron

Read More

Magazines

I think it was a Saturday morning, after getting my pocket money, that I would be straight down to the newsagent to get the latest issue of my favourite comics. I can’t remember there being a time when this didn’t happen. Indeed, the habit has continued to the present day even if the content of the magazines has changed from being strip cartoons to the mostly written word. And they are delivered to my house. And I don’t get pocket money.

There were comics before the 50s and 60s but I would say that this period was the highpoint of their popularity. The Dandy and The Beano had actually started in 1937 together with other children’s comics but paper and ink shortages during the War put paid to most of the others. So they were my introduction to this world. Both were published by DC Thomson in Dundee who went on to become the major player in the industry. At the height of their popularity the Dandy and Beano had sales of two million copies a week.

Characters from these comics became, and have remained, part of the British landscape. Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Beryl the Peril, Desperate Dan and his cow pie (I believe there is a statue to Dan in Dundee). And, of course, The Bash Street Kids.

I have to relate this story:

Leo Baxendale was born near Preston, his first job was as an artist for the Lancashire Evening Post. After reading a Dennis the Menace strip, Baxendale submitted a portfolio to the Beano and in 1953 he created Minnie the Minx. DC Thomson then wanted him to create a new strip based on a crowd of children pouring out of school.

Baxendale remembered walking along Fishergate in Preston and by the time he had arrived at his bus stop he had it all worked out. Yes, The Bash Street Kids were born just round the corner from me.

the Bash Street Kids pouring out of school

Incidentally, when he was persuaded to move to Dundee he imagined a life behind a desk in the offices of D C Thomson. The reality was that the staff would move all the desks to one side and play keepie uppie whilst ideas for the strip were literally kicked around and the Chief Sub-Editor took notes.

I should mention that the other big seller at the time was The Eagle but I never did find that to my taste and I can’t even remember reading it other than once or twice.

I should also mention that there was a flourishing market for girl’s comics at the same time. Titles such as Bunty and Judy. I used to enjoy reading my sister’s copies if they had stories about ponies.

As time passed I moved on to titles that I believe had a more formative role in my later reading tastes. All published by DC Thomson. Those Saturday mornings waiting for the latest issues of the Victor and the Hotspur and rushing home to find out what adventures Wilson the Wonder Athlete, Bernard Briggs, Gorgeous Gus, Sergeant Matt Braddock and of course Alf Tupper, Tough of the Track.

Whatever his job and wherever it was located, Alf was the eternal underdog. Regarded as a guttersnipe by the posh blokes from the Amateur Athletic Association, he was at his best the day after a night on late shift, lifting heavy objects and getting little sleep. His journey to the track (often White City) almost invariably involved falling asleep on the train and missing his stop.

Sometimes this was caused by skullduggery of the worst kind by stuck-up rich boys from a university somewhere, but usually it was because he could not stop himself from rescuing people in distress or just generally being a selfless chap. Regardless of this, he always got there in the nick of time and, having just finished his fish and chips, went on to win the championships or even break the world record for the mile and utter his famous catchphrase ‘I ran 'em all!’

Alf Tupper, tough of the track

Which brings me to the following poem by Adrian Hogan:

Heroes

The splat of The Rover on lino
- Thursday’s breakfast serials.
Eccentric, rebellious, lone
fighters of lost causes. Alf Tupper,
my favourite. All week I’d wonder,
had he run, plimmyless, belly full
of chips, toes in tatters, been spiked
in sight of glory by Chinless Charles
double-barrelled born to win?
Or had Alf run in hobnailed boots
after a rivetting forty hours straight
thrashing metal into shape
saving the gasworks, welding
machines to life with the flame
of his oxy-acetylene torch?
My dad was an Alf lacking
the gift of Bannister legs
and lungs. But would Tupper
have coped with a wife, six kids
and every day the same cliff-hanger?

Smiths Knoll Issue 10. 1995

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Magazines - A Learning Curve

My first magazine was Look and Learn when I was still at infant school. My father bought it for me because I was captivated by a story my school teacher read to the class. I pestered him to ask her about it, which he eventually did, and I was delighted to have the story for myself. I think it was The Borrowers, or something similar.  As I got older, I read comics and books more than magazines. It was the usual ones, Beano and Dandy. We moved into a pub where a box of children’s books had been left ‘For the little girl’, me. Included was ‘Oor Wullie’ and ‘The Broons’ annuals. I loved them. They became my favourites characters and they still are. I’ve got many more of their annuals. I still have the collection of books that was left for me. It was my introduction to Enid Blyton and a lifetime of reading and writing.

September 1967.  I started high school and made a conscious decision to hate it because it wasn’t the school I wanted to go and I had to take two buses to get there and back.  I had a couple of friends with me from primary school, which was good, but I got picked on a lot and I was constantly bullied on one of the bus rides by girls from another secondary school.  It was a miserable time but I discovered something that opened my eyes and took my mind off my worries.  It was my mother’s weekly magazine, Woman’s Own.  It offered a wealth of important information to me, a curious eleven year old.  I read all the adverts for Tampax, Lil-lets, Kotex, et al and decided that I would have Nikini when this ‘period’ thing happened to me.  I learnt a lot about life from the Problem Page. I think Claire Rayner was the agony aunt at the time. The most fascinating read was her serialised articles which I remember clearly as being titled ‘What to Tell Your Children About Sex’.  This is where I discovered what was called The Facts of Life.  It might have taken my mind off school worries but such knowledge gave me other things to fret about.  I wasn’t ever going to do ‘that’, certainly not.  I don’t know if my mum noticed what I was reading.  She might have left the magazines out on purpose, hoping I would read those articles.  At the time, it felt like I was reading something forbidden and scary. Nothing was ever said. Years later, I had the book of ‘What to Tell Your Children About Sex’ and ‘The Body Book’, another of Claire Rayner’s.  She was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, a former nurse and midwife and I think she was a TV agony aunt at some point.  She passed away more than ten years ago.  I hope it is true that she actually said, “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”

Into my teens and off to the newsagents every Saturday morning to pick up my ordered Jackie and Fabulous 208 magazines.  Jackie was great.  I covered my bedroom walls with pictures of my favourite pop stars.  Those treasured pictures and posters were saved for decades until they got binned in a clear-out, probably when we emptied the attic for the loft conversion and I had to be brutal. Oh, how I wish I’d kept them.  I would have found somewhere safe to stash them.  Fabulous 208 magazine was connected to Radio Luxembourg. I liked to listen to DJ Tony Prince in the evening.

Magazines aren’t something I read regularly, but Woman’s Own is still as good as it ever was and I buy it occasionally.  Apart from that, if I notice an interesting article, an unusual knitting pattern or someone I know has contributed, I will buy it.

My Haikus,

I loved story time,
My teacher made it such fun.
Thanks for Look and Learn.

Woman’s Own page five
Now I know what they are for.
Is it a secret?

Is that really true?
I wish I dare ask my mum.
No, I’d better not.

Hooray! Saturday!
I will go out in the rain
To get my Jackie!

PMW 2024

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

I Did It My Way

Just recently I received a text from my oldest friend. We met at the age of eleven, sixty years ago. There’s nothing unusual about receiving a text from this friend. What was strange was that it was all about magazines, and it was right at the time that I was planning to write this blog. She listed every magazine she had ever read. It seemed a lot to me, but she was a copywriter, working in advertising for many years, and I think magazines went with the job. She asked me what magazines I’d read, and I realised, as I started to recall them that I also had quite an extensive list.

It all started with comics. My brothers read Beano and Beezer, and of course I read them after the boys, sneaking them into my bedroom when they weren’t looking. My own weekly comic was Bunty which featured, amongst other things, the Four Marys, schoolgirls who got into a new scrape each week, but miraculously managed to solve all problems and come out on top. 

Even at the age of eight I was slightly sceptical of the Marys’ abilities. My favourite page was always the back cover filled with cut out dolls and wardrobes of fancy clothes with little tabs to put them on the dolls. Many happy hours were spent with a Bunty and a pair of scissors, dressing the dolls. My twenty first century, eight year old granddaughter with her own make up bag, lipstick and hair products couldn’t be a bigger contrast to my twentieth century self.

When I was about eleven a new girls’ magazine appeared on the shelves. It was called Jackie, a popular name at the time. I remember there were three in my new high school class. I’m guessing it was named Jackie rather than Jacqueline in order to be more appealing to the young teenage market. It was exciting to wake up on a Wednesday morning and find my own Jackie Magazine on the doormat. I knew the boys wouldn’t be interested as it was mainly about fashion, make up and young love. looking back it was all very tame, but it meant a cosy half hour after school, reading from cover to cover.

Recently, I discovered a Facebook group devoted to Jackie magazine. It all started so well. I was amazed at the friendly tone within the group. Each post elicited hundreds of replies. They were always positive and supportive, praising the original poster on her views. I became quite addicted to this group and began adding my own posts and pictures. There was a craze for wedding photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s, presumably because this was the time that most of Jackie’s readers would have been getting together with their future partners. There were lots of discussion about the dresses and hairstyles, but all in good spirit. We Jackie fans had something in common. Our young teenage years been simple with no phones, laptops or computers to distract us. I suppose we were fairly immature and innocent. It was interesting to read about the weddings and to see that the majority of them had survived over forty years. I’m sure it was a higher successful percentage than the general public, those poor souls who had never read Jackie in their formative years, but what do I know?

Despite the original camaraderie one day the Jackie Facebook group exploded and disappeared. Only to rise again a few days later with new admin, new rules and a rather falsely jolly ethos. As far as I could make out this had all been caused by one unmarried or divorced (or perhaps unhappily married) group member who was sick of seeing all the ‘then and now,’ wedding pictures. Fair enough.

When I started reading Jackie I had only just learned the facts of life, which intrigued and appalled me in equal measure. The learning of these facts had come, not from a magazine, but from a rather different type of booklet. I remember the incident vividly. I was off school, in bed, poorly, and my mum was on the landing, ironing to keep me company. The conversation turned to a friend of my dad’s who was in an iron lung, due to polio. He had been in hospital for about 20 years but had recently married his physio and moved into a house with a mobile contraption which kept him breathing. Only his head - and two waxy looking arms and hands - were outside the machine He could move nothing but his facial features. Innocently I asked my mum if she thought he and his wife would like to have children. This was obviously the moment my mum had been waiting for. She dashed into her bedroom, and I heard the bedside cabinet being opened. She returned with a booklet, the cover a black and white picture of some smiling women in vest and pants, reaching up into the air. The title was ‘The Way to Healthy Womanhood’. My mum handed me the booklet, suggested I read it, and went downstairs for a cup of tea.

I flicked through the first few pages. There were several diagrams with labels, and a couple more pictures of (presumably) healthy women. It took me a while to get to the main event. I read it two or three times, with growing realisation of what it was all about. This ‘having it up,’ which was thrown about at school by some of the bolder, more streetwise children, was actually a euphemism for making babies. Wow, that meant my mum and dad had done it three times. Crikey.

My mum was great at answering questions so by the time I returned to school I thought I was quite the expert on sex (or Making Love, as ‘The way to Healthy Womanhood’ liked to call it). So when Jackie introduced a problem page I felt perfectly qualified to read and comment on these dilemmas, most of which were very mild and innocent by today’s standards. There were lots of questions on ‘heavy petting,’ (which always made me think of patting a dog); dating etiquette; whether to kiss on a first date; and not much more. Even then I remember wondering if they really merited publication.

Petticoat was my next magazine of choice. It was geared much more to older teens, and the problem pages had moved on. Heavy petting had apparently become much more common, which was news to fifteen year old me. Nevertheless, I devoured the problems, along with the fashions and make up, week after week, until I left home and went to college. I’d forgotten all about the magazine until I went up into our attic one day about twenty years ago and tripped over a large cardboard box. After the obligatory swearing, I opened the lid to see what I could blame. Inside was a huge pile of Petticoat magazines, which I vaguely remembered carting from house to house with each move, much to my husband’s annoyance. As I flicked through them I was transported back to the mid sixties and joss sticks, flowers in my hair, patchouli oil, tiny home made dresses and gladiator sandals. Life was so full of both angst and promise. By the time I discovered that box I’d got three adult children and had obviously found my own way to womanhood, healthy or not.

Postscript: I sold the Petticoat magazines on eBay for £1500 to a man in Japan, and my husband was not quite so annoyed. But that’s a story for another day.

The Way to Healthy Womanhood

The way to healthy womanhood
Or so they said in '63:
Be feminine
Be careful
Be virginal
Be sporty
But not too sporty
Beware of horse riding
And bikes
Save yourself
No risks
No leading boys on
No giving it away
No petting
No snogging
No tongues
No flirting
No undressing
No fumbling
NO SEX
And, under no circumstances……
No fun
No enjoyment
No wonder 60 years later
I never even took that first step
On The Way to Healthy Womanhood

Thanks for reading.

Jill Reidy

Read More

The Romantics - So Glad I Found You

It had been a decade of uncertainty, feeling lost and out of my depth. I’d been riding an emotional roller-coaster that got faster and faster and would not stop. I jumped off, brushed myself down and wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner.

I lived alone, quietly. I had my job, my home, my car and I think I had my sanity, though others might have doubted it, I didn’t question it much. I enjoyed the silence of my own company. There had been too much noise before. I read book after book, Irwin Shaw, Colleen McCullough and Edna O'Brien amongst others. I unpacked the collection of Marshall Cavendish Mind Alive magazines that my father had subscribed to for me, which had remained untouched throughout my teens. I learned a lot from the articles that interested me and took pride in fixing the magazines into the binders that made it into an encyclopaedia.  If I wasn’t reading, I was writing. No television at this time, but I had a radio if I fancied ‘Saturday Night Theatre’ or ‘Play for Today’ and I had my record player.

My English Literature studies were far behind me, but I found myself revisiting the Bronte’s, some Dickens and my favourite stories from Joyce’s Dubliners. From somewhere into this mix came poetry and those poems familiar to me were taking on new meaning, or perhaps I’d missed something  before. It was the poets, the ones we call The Romantics and I latched on to something that I felt I belonged to.  I had (still have, my photo) The Penguin Book of Love Poetry and I read bits of it every day. It probably wasn’t the best poetry to throw myself headlong into. Death, separation and desolation were subjects perhaps best avoided, but difficult to do so when words were reaching out to me, especially those of Byron and Shelley.

I wish I could have been in the party or at least a fly on the wall in the summer of 1816 when Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (later Shelley), and others were having fun at Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva. It must have been a tremendous storm to keep them indoors for three days, if what I read is true. They wrote horror stories to scare each other, which might have been the beginnings of Mary’s novel, Frankenstein.  I imagine that writing was not their only past-time. Their lives were forever intertwined.  I love to read about their bohemian lifestyle and their freedom, but I wonder, were they really happy?

Somewhere buried in the archives of our house, I will still have the framed poems that once adorned the walls of my house. I liked to do calligraphy, back in the day when my eyes still worked, and one of the first I made for myself was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet XLIII, from the Portuguese.

 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861)

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

I have a badly kept secret.

Working in a newsagents provides me with countless opportunities to read. I have to tell you now- this dirty little secret of mine is not something I'm ashamed of, I even embrace it.

Wander into my workplace of a morning and, if I'm on, you could probably notice a few magazines on the side. I read lots of them: Stuff for things I can't buy in the UK or even afford, Private Eye for a regular laugh at David 'I like soundbites I do' Cameron and co, Cosmo to try and stay ahead of the evil sex- at least in thinking, Woman's Weekly because I really don't care that I'm male- I like the stories (normally to mock) and they always seem to have a vegan recipe, More, Reveal, Real Lives, Now...for scandal and ridiculous stories and, by home time- I tend to have read enough to at least half inspire a poem, even if it never makes it.

I always have a favourite story as well. Today I read all about a woman that has married a fairground carousel. Fruitcake. Apparently, she "rides the pole until she silently reaches orgasm". As I said, a fruitcake.

When the first 'read and scatter the thoughts' approach fails, I find that the Sunday inserts can prove inspirational. Between The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The FT Weekend, The Mail On Sunday (never bought, you should understand) and anything else with a poly-bagged free CD, I have acquired a huge pile of recycling that I plan to use. In fact, it is on days like these (Sundays) that I tend to have a flick through, so let's see.

Matt Cardle X Factor interview? No interest.

Frieze Art Fair? Not my thing.

World Homeless Day photograph special? Well, thank you very much The Independent on Sunday.

Name Withheld

I keep coming back. Another look

your car crash life irresistible.

And through the lens your eyes change.

You could be anyone. First, a wispy

bearded man, washed up.

Then, the friendly drinker. Still, no -

your whiskers, yard brush bristles,

the youthfully kept brow. You are timeless,

Name Withheld, and I fear you

like Rasputin.

And there we have it, my badly kept secret: I write and so I read- anywhere and everywhere I can. Flyers, mags, posters, cards, papers, books, pamphlets, adverts, shop signs, street names... I think the key is to keep your eyes open- only then will you see. Hope you enjoyed the poem, an excellent use of Sunday time I think.

Thanks for reading. I enjoyed that.

S.

Read More